In general, a color light-sensitive material has on the support thereof a red-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a cyan color-forming coupler, a green-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a magenta color-forming coupler, and a blue-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer containing a yellow color-forming coupler, and additionally other necessary layers such as antihalation layer, interlayer, filter layer, protective layer and the like.
In recent years, there has been strongly proposed the development of color light-sensitive materials more improved in the film speed and image sharpness. As the method of improving the image sharpness there are conventionally known a method in which the thickness of the emulsion layer of a color light-sensitive material is reduced to minimize the light scatter caused by the silver halide crystals of the emulsion layer and by others, another method in which materials (such as dyes, UV-absorbing agents) to absorb an undesirable light in a specific spectral region are added to the emulsion for improving the image sharpness, and equivalent other methods.
The thickness of the emulsion layer of a color light-sensitive material is generally from 20 to 30.mu.. However, if the thickness is reduced to 18.mu. or smaller, there occurs the disadvantage that the red and green densities become ill balanced due to the changes in developing conditions (such as developing temperature, time, agitation) and in the developer composition (such as the concentration of the color developing agent used, pH, halide ion concentration), and thus the thickness reduction has its limits.
The red density and green density are formed by the coupling reaction of the oxidized product of a developing agent with the cyan coupler contained mainly in the red-sensitive emulsion layer and the magenta coupler mainly in the green-sensitive emulsion layer, respectively, but, if the red density and green density are changed to be out of balance, when printing is made by, for example, an automatic printer well known to those in the art, the same printing condition cannot be applied, which constitutes a serious shortcoming in the procedure of the printing operation.